Have you ever come across the Johari Window? It’s a widely used tool designed by two psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham (hence the name), and it helps you reflect on areas of personal development.
The ‘window’ is a visual representation of four quadrants as shown below:
In assessing your personal attributes – your skills, emotions, values, and behaviours – the Johari Window works like this:
Open area – features about you that are well known by yourself and others.
Blind spot – features about you that others can see, but you can’t. You would need to seek feedback from others to reveal these features.
Hidden area – features known to you, but not others.
Unknown area – features unknown to both you (so far) and those around you. For example, a skill or interest you never knew who you had.
Focusing on the goal of personal development, it’s the blind spot window we’ll concentrate on today.
Seeking feedback from trusted friends, colleagues and peers can be a really great way to uncover blind spots, enabling you to then incorporate them into your self-development action plan and goal setting.
How do you ask for feedback?
The first step in asking for feedback, is to have a clear goal as to what you want to achieve from the process. Choose people whose perspectives you trust and explain to them you’re seeking feedback to help you determine actionable steps for growth, not for validation. The focus is on what you can improve on in the future.
You’ll want to ask thoughtful, open-ended questions and to follow up on the questions for clarity. It can be a good idea to take notes while receiving feedback, this shows the person that you are genuine and allows for silence and reflection for both of you to further deepen the insight you will receive.
Some examples of questions you may consider asking include:
- What are my strengths? How can I perform better in these areas?
- On a scale of 1 to10, how effective do you find me as a communicator? Why?
- How can I improve the way I communicate with you and others?
- What suggestions do you have to make me more effective in my role?
As the Johari Window exercise shows – you don’t know, what you don’t know. But seeking feedback can be a great way to help you identify your blind spots and work on the areas where you’d like to see improvement.
For a template and more insight into the Johari Window, as well as further resources on giving and receiving feedback, check out the Emotional Intelligence and Boosting Your Professionalism modules in the Skilled Professional Challenge.
